Michael Weiss is the Research Director of The Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank, as well as the co-chair of its Russia Studies Centre. A native New Yorker, he has written widely on English and Russian literature, American culture, Soviet history and the Middle East. Follow @michaeldweiss

The Arab League mission to Syria isn’t just a failure, it’s an accomplice to Assad’s crimes

Kafranbel, Syria has some remarkable residents. “NATO leaders!” reads one revolutionary sign in the city, “if the Libyans could pay oil for you, we will sell our houses to cover the cost”. Another placard calls for the “construction of 5-star hotel to attract the Arab monitors.” Then there's the sign wielded by a little girl already versed in the quandaries of ancient philosophy: “We demand observers to observe the observers while they observe!”

Whatever you think of the idea of humanitarian intervention in Syria (an argument that evidently makes the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the head of the Free Syrian Army and the French Foreign Minister all neoconservatives), or about the very real and tragic plight of Christian minorities in the Middle East, you ought to consider the following:

The Arab League delegation was only sent into the country after the Assad regime negotiated the terms of its remit, and it is held in such low regard by the Syrian people because the organisers have made insultingly little effort to mask the true intention of their Potemkin farce.

The delegation is headed by General Mohammad Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, the former head of Sudan’s military intelligence service and the founder of Omar al-Bashir’s genocidal janjaweed militias in Darfur. As one Syrian human rights campaigner aptly described this appointment, it is like “a rapist … act[ing] as a forensic expert assistant while examining the victim”.

Last week, al-Dabi visited the battleground city of Homs and reported that he didn't see “anything frightening,” no tanks but “some armored vehicles.” Here are the orange-jacketed monitors in Homs standing right in front… a tank.

In this video, protestors in the Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs did al-Dabi the favour of laying the corpse of a slain boy on top of a League vehicle, complete with the spent cartridges used by regime forces to kill him. Though I suppose this is no more frightening to the godfather of Sudanese genocidaires than a football match played with human skulls would be to the Khmer Rouge.

Then in this video Baba Amr resident Khalid Abou Salah explains to al-Dabi that his remit is the problem in itself and that the delegation hasn’t ended the murder of civilians. Al-Dabi tells Salah to hang in there and believe in “dialogue.” Salah is unimpressed and responds that once the delegation leaves an area, the shooting starts up again. Sure enough, al-Dabi and his team eventually quit Baba Amr. Here’s what happened.

The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Nabil al-Araby, actually gained some credibility several months ago for suspending Syria’s membership and even hinting at a Libya-style humanitarian intervention. But he has lately shown himself and his organisation to be guardians not of besieged civilians but of the defunct status quo of Arab authoritarianism. What al-Araby is saying about the fundamental legitimacy of his mission amounts to the old saw about not being able to make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. When Panaït Istrati toured the Soviet Union in the 1920s, he famously replied to that: “All right, I can see all the broken eggs. Now where’s this omelette of yours?” The people of Kafranbel might ask the same.